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I have been attempting to dig deeper into the symbolism in The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask. Specifically regarding Majora itself. To aid in this process, I have tried to check the English version of Majora's various names with the original Japanese.

However, I haven't quite been able to understand what I've found. (Google Translate is about the best I can do.)

"Majora's Mask" is translated as "Majora's Mask," so no problem there.

"Majora's Incarnation" is translated as "Mujula's Incarnation." Still pretty similar, though it's a bit strange how "Majora" has become "Mujula."

And finally "Majora's Wrath" translates as "Mujira no Magi." And this is where I truly fall in bewilderment.

My question is twofold: what is the meaning of "Mujira no Magi"? And why does "Majora" seem to change with each version? Is this intentional in the original language or just an artifact of translation?

(I got the original Japanese names from this webpage, but I do not know if it is 100% accurate.)

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    Keep in mind that Google Translate isn't a perfect translator. It interprets things decently well when straightforward, but often times the algorithm makes guesses, and sometimes even catches onto things that have no meaning. For your example, I get "Majora no ikari" instead of "Mujira no Magi" when I put in "Majora's Wrath".
    – Mwr247
    Commented Feb 26, 2019 at 19:27
  • Indeed. I mentioned translation artifacts in the original post. Still better than nothing though for a monolinguistic fellow like me.
    – Legoman
    Commented Feb 26, 2019 at 19:32
  • @Gnemlock I was asking about the apparent discrepancy in the Japanese and English names.
    – Legoman
    Commented Feb 26, 2019 at 21:45
  • Given that the accepted answer confirms no discrepancy, it seems you were ultimately only asking for a translation.
    – Gnemlock
    Commented Feb 26, 2019 at 22:37

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It's pretty simple: Google Translate is not that good. Also, the meaning of some of the names were changed in the translations.

The proper names of all these things are listed on Zeldapedia:

(You can verify these names are correct by searching for the Japanese; I get plenty of results in Japanese for the game, including Wikipedia.)

The names are not that hard to understand even if you don't speak/read Japanese. The character の (no) is the equivalent of the possessive apostrophe s in English. Also, Japanese really only has one sound that's between the English "R" and "L" sounds instead of both. Lastly, with the exception of vowels and ん (n), all Kana (which is how the language is written when logograms are not used) are a consonant followed by a vowel. If an imported word has a consonant not followed by a vowel, it is replaced with the letter for that consonant followed by vowel (usually "u").

As you can see, "Majora" is written the same everywhere. From there, it's pretty easy to look the rest up. The word 仮面 translates unsurprisingly to "mask". "Incarnation" for 化身 seems pretty spot on too. The word used instead of "Wrath", 魔人, however means "a person who has some supernatural power or ability".

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  • Many thanks! So it seems "wrath" was not the perfect word the translators could have chosen...fascinating! :-D
    – Legoman
    Commented Feb 26, 2019 at 20:23

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